Trump says U.S. and North Korea have held direct talks at 'extremely high levels'

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the U.S. had already had “direct talks” with North Korea at “extremely high levels,” and revealed that the U.S. was exploring five different locations for his on-on-one with Kim Jong Un, tentatively scheduled for early June.

“We’ve also started talking to North Korea directly,” Trump told reporters as he sat alongside Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in South Florida. “We have had direct talks at very high levels, extremely high levels, with North Korea.”

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The president divulged that none of the potential sites for his summit with Kim were in the U.S., but otherwise continued to play coy about the potentially historic meeting.

“We’ll either have a very good meeting, or we won’t have a good meeting, and maybe we won’t even have a meeting at all, depending on what’s going in,” he said.

The Washington Post and other media outlets reported Tuesday night that CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Trump's nominee to lead the State Department, held a previously undisclosed meeting over Easter weekend with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in North Korea. The trip was part of an effort to lay the ground work for a direct meeting between Trump and Kim, the Post reported.

For his part, Abe pressed Trump to discuss “achieving the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization” of North Korea during the opening of the leaders’ two-day summit in Florida.

Abe also emphasized the importance of overseeing “the abandonment of missile programs of North Korea,” adding that, “on this specific point, I would like to share understanding and recognition with Donald.”

Trump seemed to communicate that negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea were advancing, and said Japan was an important partner in the process.

“Japan and ourselves are locked and very unified on the subject of North Korea,” Trump said. “Depending on various meetings and conversations, we’ll be having meetings with Kim Jong Un very soon. Assuming things go well. It’s possible things won’t go well and we won’t have the meetings, and we’ll just continue to go along this very strong path that we have taken. But we will see what happens.”

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Kim’s potential meeting with Trump would be his third foray into international diplomacy this year. In what was believed to be his first trip outside North Korea since assuming power in 2011, Kim made a surprise visit to Beijing last month to meet with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. And next week, Kim will meet President Moon Jae-in of South Korea for the first time at Panmunjom, a neutral village on the border between the two countries.

“They are discussing an end to the war. Subject to a deal, they would certainly have my blessing and they do have my blessing to discuss that,” Trump said of Kim and Moon’s upcoming summit. “Without us — and without me, in particular — I guess you would have to say that they wouldn’t be discussing anything.”

The U.S. ambassador to Japan, William Hagerty; White House chief of staff John Kelly; the National Security Council’s senior director for Asian affairs, Matthew Pottinger; and Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan were among the aides flanking the president at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday. Also joining the American delegation was new the national security adviser, John Bolton, who has previously advocated for a preemptive military strike against North Korea.

The president’s summit this week with Abe — one of his favorite foreign leaders — is the third they have held since Trump took office in January of last year. Trump welcomed Abe to Mar-a-Lago in February 2017 and visited Japan in November.

“Shinzo and I have developed a close relationship,” Trump said. “We speak all the time. And our nations, I think, have never been closer than they are right now. Many of the world’s great leaders request to come to Mar-a-Lago and Palm Beach. They like it. I like it. We’re comfortable.”

Trump said he and Abe would continue the North Korea discussions on Wednesday, and would also participate in trade negotiations related to Japan’s bulk purchasing of American military equipment and the United States’ importing of cars and other goods from the Asian power. But first, the leaders will hit the links.

“We’re going to sneak out tomorrow morning and play a round of golf, if possible,” Trump said.